314 Book 2 (43 page)

Arthur was just an accountant at a small shipping company; a family man with no enemies; a simple, common, unassuming, average person that had never done anything even remotely deserving of the torture he was to endure. One minute he’d been walking to his car after a long day of inventorying manifests, and the next he was waking up in pain, his arms tied and hoisted behind him and his ankles strapped to the legs of a table. He’d been gagged already, and his clothes had been stripped off. His feet were on the floor while his belly was laid out across the cold metal surface. As he was trying to discern what had happened, he felt something invade his anus. He tried to scream and struggle, but he was bound too tight. The torturers forced a wide tube into his bowels, and then lit a fire at the end of it. Arthur felt his innards squirm as the smoke wafted into him, and the only comparison he could make was that it felt like he was having a bowel movement in reverse. After that, the torturers revealed a long iron rod with the tip glowing molten red from being placed in a fire. Arthur couldn’t stop them from assaulting him with it. The rod seared his anus as it slid in and out, over and over, and caused pungent smoke to fill the room as it scorched him.

Shortly after, they sliced off Arthur’s nipples, but by then his guts were in such pain that nothing else seemed to register. His escape was a final fight for life, because death was the only other outcome that seemed plausible here. Arthur thought of his wife and children as he staggered blindly through the dark hall, his legs soaked with whatever fluid was leaking from his ravaged anus. His hands were bound behind his back, and he could feel blood dripping off his eyebrow from the wound he’d suffered when he head-butted one of the white-painted torturers. He wasn’t sure how many of them there were, and had stopped counting new faces after realizing there were more than ten of them.

“How’s your tummy, worm food?” asked one of the cackling voices that mocked his escape.

Arthur’s shoulder touched a cold, stone wall. His muscles ached, and he struggled to continue forward. His skin grinded against the rough stone, but no sensation resembling pain came to him. There was too much agony from within him to allow external wounds to matter.

“Boo!”

A light flicked on in the hall and then off again, allowing just enough time to reveal a man standing twenty feet ahead. It was one of the torturers, dressed only in shorts, with every inch of his skin painted white. The hallway was hewn from rock, and an electrical cord hung from metal loops drilled into the ceiling from which caged lights hung. The men skittered through the darkness as if they had a nocturnal predator’s senses, easily maneuvering through the cave no matter how dark it was.

Arthur tried to scream, although the gag muffled him, turning his desperation into a pitiful moan. The darkness was impenetrable, and when someone’s hand touched his back he spun in terror. These men were toying with him now.

He thrust his torso out in a wild attack, and heard a man laugh before dancing away. Then the torturer slapped Arthur’s face, initiating another angry swipe from his victim.

The light came on again. Arthur was now surrounded in the dank corridor by a multitude of the painted torturers. They had formed a semi-circle around him, and one of them carried a short, hooked blade. The knife resembled the talon of a bird of prey, black and vicious, with a wooden handle that was wrapped in leather. The man that carried it looked stronger than the others, with well-defined muscles and little body fat to dull them. His head was shaved, and his features were sharp, including a long, thin nose and high cheekbones. He bore a madness that usurped even the insanity of the moment, and his pupils were pinpoints amid his light blue eyes. Arthur was reminded of a hawk or an eagle as the torturer advanced.

There would be no escape, and Arthur collapsed to his knees. A pool of blood began to form under him, flowing from his anus and down the back of his thighs.

“Worm food,” said the man with the blade, “let’s see if your baby’s ready.”

The circle of men surged toward Arthur, and he hardly struggled as they forced him to the ground. His back splashed in his blood as the men slammed him to the jagged floor and then held him there. The one with the blade straddled Arthur, and then set the tip of the hooked knife against one of the wounds on his victim’s chest.

Arthur moaned as the blade poked through the scab where his left nipple had been. The pain was intense, but still weak compared to the agony in his gut.

“There we go,” said the man with the blade as he twisted further, producing fresh blood from the wound. “Pour the milk.”

One of the other men was carrying a metal flask, and he leaned in close before pouring milk over Arthur’s freshly opened wound. This was the third time the torturers had performed this bizarre ritual. The other two times had ended with them leaving unsatisfied.

All of the white-painted men stared at Arthur’s wound, patiently waiting for something to happen. It seemed as if they would go away upset yet again, and that Arthur would be returned to the table.

Then he felt something stir within. The agony in his gut intensified and the man with the blade shouted, “I see it!”

Arthur tried to raise his head to look down at his chest, but one of the torturers forced him down again. The men started to cheer as the one with the blade set his free hand on Arthur’s ample belly. He pressed hard, causing the inflamed intestines even more pain than before.

“She’s here,” said the man with the blade. “Get the crank.”

“Should we take him to the bed?” asked one of the other men.

“No,” answered their leader. “We can’t waste any time. Go get the crank. We’ll do it here.”

The standing torturer ran off as the one with the blade glanced excitedly at the others. “Hold him down.”

They tightened the pressure against Arthur, pinning him even harder to the ground. His hands were still bound behind his back, forcing his midsection up at an awkward angle. Arthur screamed out as best he could beneath the gag, but all he could manage was a truncated howl as the man straddling him nearly crushed his belly. The torturer set the hooked blade’s point against Arthur’s stomach and pressed until it sank in. Then he slit open his victim’s abdomen as the others watched.

The torturer that had run off moments earlier now returned, carrying what looked like a miniature spit upon which one might roast a rat instead of a pig.  There was a clip on the center bar of the device, and the man holding it had bent the latch back. “Andrew, I’m ready.”

Their leader, the man named Andrew, looked at his subordinate and nodded as he said, “You’ll have to be quick. The Cadger’s moving fast.”

Arthur felt something squirm in his guts and the anguish was overwhelming. He could feel his torturer’s fingers inside of him, digging and grasping. Arthur felt sweat pouring down his forehead as he stared up at the grey ceiling. He tried to scream, but the pain stole his voice even before it could be muffled by the gag. The room began to waver as his vision blurred, and he wondered if he was about to pass out or if death was finally at hand.

He heard a clink of metal that woke him from his daze. The men around him were laughing in triumph, and the one holding Arthur’s head down released his grip. Arthur was able to rise up enough to look down at what the torturers had done to him.

A red rope protruded from Arthur’s belly, and the torturers had clipped the end of it to the small crank. Arthur stared at the sight, unable to comprehend exactly what he was seeing. His vision faded, and then returned, as if someone was dimming the lights in the hallway. He squinted at the red strand and then recognized what it was. They were eviscerating him.

They had sliced his small intestine and pulled it from his abdomen, then attached it to the crank. The rope of intestine wasn’t pink or fleshy, but was instead purple and inflamed, highlighted by splattered blood. Then Arthur realized that it wasn’t his intestine that was connected to the crank; it was something within the entrail that the torturers were pulling forth.

A white and black worm emerged, like a blade from a sheath of Arthur’s own intestine. The torturer wound the crank, and the worm coiled around the bar. Arthur felt every inch as the parasite slid free. It began to writhe as it came further out, and Arthur was frozen in shock and fear as he witnessed the worm emerging.

“You did good, worm food,” said Andrew as he sat on Arthur and continued to wind the crank.

Arthur lost consciousness. He died shortly after of blood loss. The last sensation he experienced was the worm sliding free of his severed small intestine. His last emotion before he slipped away was a sense of loss, like a loved one was being taken from him.

*   *   *

“Hey Princess,” said Leo Mulroney as he pounded on his little sister’s bedroom door. “Wake up.”

Neva didn’t answer. She was face down in her pillow, sprawled out on the pink covers of her bed. It was far too sweltering to lie beneath the covers, even at night.

Leo wouldn’t quit. “I know you’re in there.” He rattled the locked knob and pounded again. The painted skull that hung on a hook on the inside of Neva’s door shook as her brother knocked. The decoration was made of paper mache, and Neva had found it in the local art museum’s dumpster following a Day of the Dead celebration. “Get up, it’s almost noon.”

“Go away,” said Neva, although her voice was muffled by the pillow.

“June’s on the phone.”

“So?” asked Neva, confused as to why she should care that Leo’s girlfriend had called him.

“She wants to talk to you.”

Neva was intrigued enough to push herself up. Her room was dark, revealing no sign of daylight through the blackout blinds. “Me? Why?”

“Will you just open the door?”

Neva stretched and arched her back while still sitting on her bed. She scratched at the back of her head, but had forgotten that the day before she’d gone to the stylist and asked them to cut off her formerly long locks. She ran her fingers through the bob and marveled at the way it felt. This was the first time she’d ever had bangs, and there was a strip of dyed purple hair on the left side, slightly off-center. She couldn’t have explained why she opted for such a drastic new hairdo except to say that she wanted a change.

Everyone had promised that things would change once Neva was out of high school, but she’d graduated three months earlier and so far nothing felt much different. Many of her friends were preparing for college, some even having already left, but Neva’s family couldn’t afford higher education at the moment, and she didn’t want to get saddled with student loans just to get a degree when she had no idea what she wanted to do with the rest of her life anyhow.

Neva had been a good student, but never felt like she fit in well with high school. The first two years had been spent in near isolation, and Neva often found herself alone in the back of the library, absorbed in a book instead of any social endeavor. Once alcohol started showing up at parties more frequently, Neva found herself eased of her usual social anxiety, but quickly realized that she’d inherited her mother’s predisposition to chemical dependency. She stopped using drugs, but drinking was as much a part of the high school experience for her as boyfriends and dating were to other girls.

Leo pounded again, starting a steady cadence that he refused to stop.

“I’m coming,” said Neva, annoyed and still tired. She stared at the clock on her nightstand, almost unwilling to believe it was right. What time had she gone to bed the night before?

Neva tugged on the chain of her lamp, revealing her dramatically colorful room. She’d painted each wall a different, vibrant color, but nearly every inch was hidden by Dia de los Muertos paintings. The unique style of the holiday fascinated Neva, and she was inexplicably drawn to the sultry, skull-painted women staring plaintively back at her. It would be reasonable for someone to be unnerved by the extent of macabre faces staring at all hours from the walls, but it felt comforting to Neva, as if she slept in a tomb of silent guardians.

In the center of one of the walls, surrounded by the pictures of pretty women with skulls painted on their faces, was Neva’s dresser and mirror. She walked to it, and stared at her new haircut, her visage a member of the crowd staring back at her from the wall.

Leo continued his persistent rhythm.

She lamented the dark circles under her eyes. She looked weary, pale, and not unlike the women covering the walls. The party that she’d attended the night before was a blur of keg-stands, beer bongs, and shots. This was the last week before several of her friends left for college, so it had been filled with parties. Last night she found herself at the home of Brian Timberland, and she saw something that she wished she hadn’t.

“Fuck it,” said Leo as he gave up.

Neva could hear him walking away, his shoes clopping on the wood floor of the hallway. She went to the door, unlocked it, and opened it, finally conceding to her brother after he’d given up, as if she were training a puppy not to beg.

“What the hell did you do to your hair?” he asked, purposefully and pointedly critical.

Leo was a statuesque man, tall and athletic, with a body best described as chiseled, and it was a mystery how he’d been born from the same parents as the rest of the Mulroney children. Neva and Leo’s father, Chuck, was the epitome of geek; a near stereotype of the 1980’s computer nerd, he reveled in the subculture, even going so far as to name a couple of his children based upon the television shows and movies that he cherished. Neva’s oldest brother, Kirk, was named after the captain of the starship Enterprise, and Leo was short for Leonard, a nod to the actor who played Spock in the original series.